Asha John

 Let people be inspired by how you deal with your flaws 🙂🙃

i bet superman says pop

I bet Captain America says pop

The s o d a w a r s

Where I come from, we say soda. Or we say the brand name, or what kind. “Can I have a root beer mom?” “Can I have a Diet Coke?” “What kind of soda do you want?”

Honestly I think my grandpa says pop so

I say pop. Most people in Western NY say pop as well.

The further south/east you go in NY, the more people say soda. I’m in central NY and we say soda.

we say soft drinks or everything is just coke

Normal people say soda

Real people say pop

If youre from some assbackwards shithole like Arkansas

@this-is-cthulhu-privilege we say soda here or the actual name of it. We aren’t that backwards.

Are you sure it’s not just you? I thought Arkansas has a population of 7 with its main export being meth

My sister and her family moved to Arkansas and they say soda, or like absurdistgalaxies was saying. But she’s from my area in NC as well and we all talk like galaxies

Capital District region in NY = soda.  But true story on language differences.  Long story as to why but when my daughter was three, we moved to Colorado, specifically Denver and soda became pop and she first thought she was being offered a lollipop.  Then we went into a bank and the teller – tall dude – smiled down at her and said would you like a sucker, sweetie?  Now, in NY, a sucker is someone easily fooled and an insult to be called one.  She looked at him like he was a crazy man until I translated quickly, “He’s asking if you’d like a lollipop, sweetie.“  Returned to NY when she was 12 (that took way too long; hated Denver) and we go into McDonald’s and she promptly orders an orange pop and the worker was, "Sorry.  We don’t sell lollipops.”

All that was amusing but I had words with the teacher who tried to correct her pronunciation of pistachio because she didn’t like my daughter’s NY accent.

a fascinating regional map of the states and common names for high fructose corn syrup liquid marketed like it’s manna from heaven:

http://popvssoda.com/

for what it’s worth, i’m from alberta (western) canadia and everyone but my east-coast friend says pop or cola or soda depending on mood, but soda most of all. she says cola :b

SOFT DRINK MOTHERFUCKERS

im tired and i want to kiss a girl

non-binary as hell in my art studio

I wanted my first-year film students to understand what happens to a story when actual human beings inhabit your characters, and the way they can inspire storytelling. And I wanted to teach them how to look at headshots and what you might be able to tell from a headshot. So for the past few years I’ve done a small experiment with them.

Some troubling shit always occurs.

It works like this: I bring in my giant file of head shots, which include actors of all races, sizes, shapes, ages, and experience levels. Each student picks a head shot from the stack and gets a few minutes to sit with the person’s face and then make up a little story about them. 

Namely, for white men, they have no trouble coming up with an entire history, job, role, genre, time, place, and costume. They will often identify him without prompting as “the main character.” The only exception? “He would play the gay guy.” For white women, they mostly do not come up with a job (even though it was specifically asked for), and they will identify her by her relationships. “She would play the mom/wife/love interest/best friend.” I’ve heard “She would play the slut” or “She would play the hot girl.” A lot more than once.

For nonwhite men, it can be equally depressing. “He’s in a buddy cop movie, but he’s not the main guy, he’s the partner.” “He’d play a terrorist.” “He’d play a drug dealer.” “A thug.” “A hustler.” “Homeless guy.” One Asian actor was promoted to “villain.”

For nonwhite women (grab onto something sturdy, like a big glass of strong liquor), sometimes they are “lucky” enough to be classified as the girlfriend/love interest/mom, but I have also heard things like “Well, she’d be in a romantic comedy, but as the friend, you know?” “Maid.” “Prostitute.” “Drug addict.”

I should point out that the responses are similar whether the group is all or mostly-white or extremely racially mixed, and all the groups I’ve tried this with have been about equally balanced between men and women, though individual responses vary. Women do a little better with women, and people of color do a little better with people of color, but female students sometimes forget to come up with a job for female actors and black male students sometimes tell the class that their black male actor wouldn’t be the main guy.

Once the students have made their pitches, we interrogate their opinions. “You seem really sure that he’s not the main character – why? What made you automatically say that?” “You said she was a mom. Was she born a mom, or did she maybe do something else with her life before her magic womb opened up and gave her an identity? Who is she as a person?” In the case of the “thug“, it turns out that the student was just reading off his film resume. This brilliant African American actor who regularly brings houses down doing Shakespeare on the stage and more than once made me weep at the beauty and subtlety of his performances, had a list of film credits that just said “Thug #4.” “Gang member.” “Muscle.” Because that’s the film work he can get. Because it puts food on his table.

So, the first time I did this exercise, I didn’t know that it would turn into a lesson on racism, sexism, and every other kind of -ism. I thought it was just about casting. But now I know that casting is never just about casting, and this day is a real teachable opportunity. Because if we do this right, we get to the really awkward silence, where the (now mortified) students try to sink into their chairs. Because, hey, most of them are proud Obama voters! They have been raised by feminist moms! They don’t want to be or see themselves as being racist or sexist. But their own racism and sexism is running amok in the room, and it’s awkward.

This for every time someone criticizes how characters of color and female characters of color especially are treated in text and by subsequent fandoms.  It’s never “just a television/movie/book”. It’s never been ”just”.

“…and by subsequent fandoms.“ <— bless this addition.

This one is always worth reblogging. When I say, “Representation matters,” it’s not just the presence of PoC, women, PwD, LGBTQIA, in narrative, it’s the roles are those characters are occupying.

The hall of mirrors that is the interplay between fiction and real life becomes a negative feedback loop with real consequences, because we internalize things and then we act them out.

Storytelling is a powerful thing. What stories are we telling, and why?

How media clearly reflects the sexism and the racism we cannot see in ourselves.

Change the paradigm. Change the stories. Change the world.

Britain is not open about the stuff we’ve done at all. 

Slavery is taught but that’s about it. And even then the focus is on “We stopped it”, often leaving out the part about profiting from it for 200 years. 

The crimes in Ireland are only taught at A Level history, meaning that most of the public is truly ignorant of British colonialism in Ireland. A huge portion of the English public voted Cromwell to be one of the greatest Britons ever, and he committed horrific acts against Ireland and Scotland. 

There’s little mention of any imperialism in Africa. When it was revealed the Mau Mau’s would be getting a memorial statue funded by the UK, people were outraged and basically denied that we ever did anything wrong. The Boer and Zulu wars are forgotten, especially the bit about the concentration camps.

There’s absolutely 0 public discussion regarding British imperialism in India. People’s knowledge seems to go as far as “We gave them trains so they should be grateful”. The British tied mutineers to cannons and blew them up. The Indian economy shrank under British rule more than any other nation in the modern era. From about 20% of global GDP (Similar to China and Europe) at the start, to about 1% at independence. 

And that’s not even mentioning the Native Americans. Long before someone ever dreamt up the idea of  United States, the European colonists were quite happy killing, abusing, and conning the natives. 

There’s a reason another phrase for the Union Jack is “The Butcher’s Apron”. You don’t get to be the world’s first hyperpower without slaughtering a lot of people. 

People really are awfully naive if they think the whitewashing of history happens only in one country. 

Prime example of the British mentality is this: “we made their countries better”.

My dad has actually said that. Mention the war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and general horrific stuff and he gets genuinely angry with you. I’m sorry, but history is not there to be swept under a rug. If you want to celebrate how successful we were, remember who we were standing on to get there.

i don’t think i will ever stop loving this

Hooooo brah! MEEEAAAN!

Kelston Boys’ High School perform a massive haka in honour of the new Maori carving on campus

That was just so powerful

I felt this like literally felt it. I’ve never seen something more beautiful…god

Every time I’m sad I’m gonna listen to this

This is so cool

@ nerds hearing mysterious music on your dash

It’s your adblock software not completely blocking some ads that include autoplay content.

First off, Tumblr isn’t going to care, because Yahoo wants to make some money off this sinkhole of a site, and more and more intrusive ads are the way to do it, especially if we’re all trying to block them anyway.

However, running the site WITH adblock disabled, I could see the ads, but not mute them (pausing/muting went away if I scrolled up or down), so I’m going to say they’re being fucks anyway and don’t deserve the advertising money if they’re going to assault me with unwanted autoplay sound that I can’t stop.

Open up your ad blocker, create a custom filter for: *.tubemogul.com* and that should stop it.  Has worked for me so far, but I literally just did this 10 minutes ago so I don’t know if it’s a complete or correct solution.  If anyone’s a bigger nerd about adblock filtering or wants to dig for other sources for the autoplay ads, hit me up.

I recommend switching to uBlock Origin, which is a bit nicer to use and doesn’t have this problem. But the above is a good solution if you don’t want to do that.

I had this problem, and adding a filter for: 

https://s.yimg.com/av/moneyball/ads/

worked for my situation.  

THIS IS REAL MUSIC PEOPLE

Adele is shook

Honestly, I find so hypocrite Taylor’s defense rant over the song with Kanye. I can’t even believe she has the nerve to say in the same rant things like ‘being falsely painted as a liar" “I was never given the full story and played part on this song is character assassination” or “you cannot approve a song you haven’t heard”.

Did she forgot the times she humiliated her exes and women with her songs? Did she asked them for ‘approval’?

In 2008, she publicly told Ellen Degeneres in her live show that Joe Jonas broke up with her over a phone call, repeatedly after that she kept on mocking him. Which Joe explained himself saying he did not break up with her or was unfaithful, he called her to talk, she told it the wrong way, and break the call. However, Joe suffered pranks for months. She also wrote the song “Forever & Always” about him calling him “scare little boy”, did she asked for approval? Did Joe wanted to be part of the character assassination?

Following that accident, Joe found a new girlfriend, the actress Camille Belle, Taylor wrote a song called “Better Than Revenge” with the following lyrics: “She’s not a saint, she’s not what you think, she’s an actress, she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress” “she’s soon gonna find out stealing other people’s toys in the playground don’t give you any friends”. The song was put in the same album as the for song Joe, and was not shy to point out who’s song that was for. Did she asked Camille’s approval?

In 2010, Taylor dated John Mayer for a couple of months, following their spit she wrote a song called “Dear John” accusing him of dating her since she was too young (19), so it made the song look like he played her. In which John replies he felt humiliated with the song and feels like she took the situation to far as to make it public. Did she asked John’s approval to be involved in the song so openly ? I think not. Following that, we know John dated Katy Perry, which is the reason for Taylor’s song “Bad Blood”, even Katy knows this song is about her and she has exposed Taylor’s ‘don’t pit one girl after another’ rants.

In 2012, Taylor dated Harry Styles for short moths, not only did she wrote a couple of songs about him (Style, Out In the Woods) but she mocked him on international television, during Taylor’s performance at the Grammys 2013, she was performing her song We are never getting back together; in the middle of the song she did a really bad British accent begging herself to gave him a change, while some back up dancers were dressed as clowns, Harry Styles was at the audience that day.

Kanye West, we all know the big accident in 2009, were Kanye takes Taylor’s moment to say she didn’t deserve the award but Beyoncé did (which was true) it was an horrible thing to do, he acknowledge it and even apologize to her wanting to make things right. Taylor took the opportunity and publicity given to her to publicly humiliate him in an award show, singing her song ‘innocent’, trying to paint the black man as the angry awful person and she’s the little bird victim of the whole situation.

Jake Gyllenhaal was also part of Taylor’s little game with the songs we are never getting back together and all too well. Which exposed pretty heavy stuff. She’s been doing this even with her non-famous exes.

So, it’s very hypocrite of Taylor Swift to come and be like “oh, I’m so offended I’m being targeted as the bad guy” GIRL, your whole career has been about targeting people with your songs and make them feel embarrassed in the media, and the media will obviously take her side since she’s been putting this ‘American sweetheart’ ‘sweet angel’ imagine that the audience and society supports. So I’m REAL GLAD she’s getting the drag she deserves and celebrities are finally exposing her.

@taylorswift :)

afternoon tea anyone???

i honestly could care less what her fake ass says about white men (after all they privileged af fuck i look like defending them) but if shes supposedly all about ‘girl power’ and white feminism then why did she slut shame that camille girl? why did she attack nicki minaj when she was exposing antiblack racism in the industry? 

why did she say she was shaking of the haters when called out for her racist subtle blackface in the video for shake it off? why did she go to serengeti, tanzania, africa to film wildest dreams which was this weird disgusting antiblack colonist ass shit which featured zero Black ppl? why did she use two Black girls in bad blood as her tokens which was a song about hating katy perry (another trash bag ass white bitch btw)? 

she, a white woman, does have privilege over men of color in certain aspects. im tired of her demonizing black men as angry villains. im tired of her using her fragile white victimhood and white feminism as an excuse to be a shitty lying ass bitch. im tired of her consistently being antiblack and her stans defending her to the ends of the earth. honestly fuck @taylorswift

here’s a thought

let’s tell young boys that they are brimming with kindness and imagination and nobility. point out their gentleness, their fierce joy and limitless capacity to love everyone and everything. tell them they are princes in a kingdom of wonders and beauty and thoughtfulness and the warmth of their own hearts. take them to museums and symphonies and forests to make tree forts in. raise them to empathize, innovate and do good things. with confidence and humility.

About me

if this gets 10,000 notes my dad said he’ll buy me a down with cis bus

When men’s toxic behaviour transcends language.

In Spanish it’s machoplantear which is a combination of macho “male” and plantear(se) “to lay out (an idea) / to consider”

We could have had hombrexplicar [hombre “man” + explicar “to explain”] and I’m not sure why we didn’t? Some peopple disagree over which is better.

The noun form is el machoplanteamiento “mansplaining”

My guess is“hombrexplicar” doesn’t capture the critique of “machismo” in quite as pointed a way; that is, “machoplantear” points directly at the problem/the term already generally used to discuss problems of masculinity.

Anyway, I’m delighted by all of this.

You make a very good point

in hebrew it’s הסגברה / hasgvara - basically a mashup of hasbara (explaining, but also carries the implication of ‘propaganda’) and gever = man

this is the best thing I have seen all week :D

This needs more languages.

Okay I’m only gonna say this once and preface this with the fact that I am Eyak and I probably do not want to hear your opinion on the Pharah skins Raindancer/Thunderbird. This is a really soul baring post so I’m not so sure about people reblogging it, if you do just try to be respective and remember this isn’t a go-ahead to go and appropriate all native cultures. 

They’re pretty damn clearly based on Pacific Northwest tribal cultures. The ones I can pick out being Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian, but we often get grouped together so that doesn’t surprise me. There are many more, but I don’t claim familiarity with all tribes and I can’t say if their art styles and myths were used.

For your comparison a little sample of the tribe’s artistic styles just to get the point across:

And I really have to get something off my chest people. I don’t have a problem with these skins, in fact I adore them. Please just chill with me for a second while I explain.

The biggest issue I see here is people (who usually arn’t ndn, let alone from pac nw tribes) yelling about cultural appropriation. Which good! I’m glad people are on guard for it! But it’s entirely possible that Pharah’s father was Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian or from another closely related Pacific Northwest tribe, so we can’t really call that yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was.

Most importantly, speaking as an Eyak. Which is all I can do despite Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian being so closely related, our tribe’s relationship with cultural appropriation is uh, not exactly the norm.

The last Eyak fluent speaker died in 2008, her name was Chief Marie Smith Jones and she was also the last full-blooded Eyak on Earth. The very last. Please appropriate Eyak culture. It’s the only way it’s going to survive. There’s less than 500 of us remaining, and we’re scattered more and more every year. Families I grew up with in Alaska converted to Catholicism. The military took my family across the globe and left us an entire continent away. The language I learned at the dinner table in 1998 now almost exclusively exists on those cassette tapes my white father recorded that night and in reconstructive attempts from a French academic that studied our language from halfway across the globe.

It sucks shit guys, it really does. 

When I first saw the Thunderbird skin I cried, I cried for an hour. Because Overwatch is huge. It will live on for years if not decades. And there’s Pharah with her hair in braids I haven’t seen my mother wear in over a decade. Wearing the colors that remind me of a home I no longer have. Embodying a mythic figure that I trusted to protect me during Y2K and sought out constellations in the sky for. 

So before you spew vitriol about how racist it is that they did that. Just kind of chill out and think about different perspectives for a moment. If you really want to help us? Consider taking a poke about http://www.eyakpeople.com/ and taking a look at our language revitalization project! It’s pretty fun and you could even learn a language out of it. 

AwA’ahdah (Thank You)

I gonna ask people to please, please respect this person’s wishes to be considerate of what they’re saying and not willfully misrepresent the point they’re trying to make.

I just wanted to reblog this because it’s something I think about a lot in terms of how viewing cultural appropriation in a very black and white binary has the end result of making white supremacy stronger than ever. By treating different arts and cultures like that plastic-wrapped grandma furniture no one’s allowed to sit on because it needs to remain perfectly preserved, white culture and art becomes the only one people feel as though they can safely engage in. I absolutely know this is done from the very conscientious place of trying to prevent the dominant culture from taking things they like and running off with them like Jack Skellington, but when it’s taken in extremely pass/fail terms it makes it very difficult for people to celebrate their OWN cultures.

Of course the best answer is “let people tell their own stories and make their own art” but I have been told by several people from a number of different backgrounds that this hostility toward anything resembling cultural exchange by audiences assuming everyone behind the scenes is white makes them afraid to engage in their OWN culture in any public way for fear of being told they’re getting it wrong. I see this happen fairly regularly in a number of creative fields, television, fashion, art, even cosplay. The number of times I see cosplayers accused of “lying about their race” when they try to dress up like a character who IS supposed to be the same background as them every con season is staggering.

This is very anecdotal but just to look at it from another perspective, I personally am not native but I’m from a very Cree community. A significant number of my friends growing up were native and Métis, our school offered Cree as a second language, we had a Cree choir, Native studies was a mandatory class to get a diploma from our school division. As far back as 5th grade, traditional craftwork was a part of social studies when we were learning about different native nations across Canada. This included beadwork, like looms and embroidery on moccasins. I’m sure the intent was probably to make historically accurate designs, but being 11 year olds we all realized pretty quick it was like pixel art and we could write words and make little pictures, and everyone was working on their beading looms making patterns they designed themselves for months after the unit that required it ended. This was a group of kids, native and non-native alike, engaging in something they were taught in an educational context long after they were required to because they found a way to enjoy it in a contemporary manner that made it fun for them. That kind of thing was encouraged from us a lot, I remember a juried art show for our school division actively encouraging all of the students to focus more on native art and techniques if they planned on entering.

I remember experiencing a bit of a culture shock when I moved out of Northern Canada for the first time and experienced a white friend criticizing a Haida-inspired piece we saw in the hall at our art school for not being “accurate enough”. I was extremely confused because as, a 17 year old raised in Northern Canada my entire life, I’d never experienced that kind of criticism of engaging with native art in a modern, contemporary way before. I just kept thinking “You have no idea who made this! How do you expect modern Native people to enjoy making their own art if you’re going to criticize it for not being held up to a textbook standard?”

Obviously now that I’m more worldly and educated in what society is like outside of Northern Canada I understand the nuance of the situation and the different perspectives that people have informed by their own experiences, but It’s also important to remember that if you turn white culture into the only one people feel allowed to engage with in a fun contemporary manner, it will always remain dominant. This is of course not to say “cultural appropriation is made up, do whatever you want” or anything like that, just that it’s a very multi-dimensional issue to consider.

Is this what you want? Billions for corporations and children going to school hungry, business as usual for Republicans.